Craft Room Nightmare to WOW

This post is dedicated to my kind and dear friend, Yvonne. Without your inspiration, motivation and support, this would not have been accomplished.

This is a long post with 15 pictures of the before, in all of it's sloppy shame.

Starting from the inside of the closet, my paper racks of 8 1/2 X 11

The white metal racks are sitting on top of an Office Depot paper sorter. I bought the racks about 5 or 6 years ago when a local scrapbooking store was leaving the market.

That's a beautiful teak stepstool cluttered with...stuff.

This is the right hand corner of the closet. There are two sets of 12 X 12 paper racks sitting on the floor and above that, a metal peg board with 12 X 12 trays jutting out and holding assorted 12 X 12 singles.

I also have some knitting stuff sitting on the floor!

Here is a shot of the same wall, but the upper portion including the shelf in the closet that runs the perimeter of the whole closet. I keep my envelope boxes and other "things" up there.

To the left of the closet door is a shorter wall that I had a metal industrial storage rack on and it housed all of my stamps, 6 X 6 paper pads, some punches and other doo dads.

In the far left corner, on the floor is a large bag, with a lot of other folded bags inside of that.

This is in between the closet and the metal rack, a wooden box with Christmas papers inside of the box and ribbon lengths in metal boxes on top of that.

Still moving around the room (as best I can, because there is not a lot of floor space and I don't want to trip) I am taking a photo of the top of a plastic craft table that I had purchased a few years ago when my eldest moved out and I had claimed this room for the crafting space.

It is "adorned" with some treasured teak boxes that I purchased from the store I was working at.

There is stuff underneath it...

This is the corner of the windowed wall, where I have one of two corner copper and black metal plant stands.

On the stand is another teak box with an acrylic panel door. I have glitter, lumiere, and other colour/paint things in there. Some sheep stand in front of my birdhouse that was made by a very clever friend that converted these old door hinges,wood flooring and brass postal box door into this beautiful bird abode.

It is all sitting atop of an old stereo unit. The stereo unit has some stuff in it too, but I can't remember what was in there.

Below is an island that I use for my CuttleBug machine, folders, dies. I love that my CB embossing folders have always been "catalogued" with these little black card stock dividers/and topped with a white name of the folder that I made each time I have acquired a new folder. It was the only organized little box that I truly kept up with.

All of my MS punches sit on a shelf below. They are kinda organized...

This is a shot of the top of my work area, another kitchen island. This is the left part of the top.

This is the right side of the work area. The following photos show the side and front shelving on the island. The sewing machine has been with me since I bought it when I was 16 years old. It moved with us when we left Montreal for Austin. I had to give up a lot of garden and plant books and magazines to compensate for the weight of this old gal. She is portable, but probably weighs 40-50 lbs! She is sitting on an old living room end table from my MIL.

The next photos show my other corner copper shelving planter, it has my music, items for altering and other empty boxes around it. It is not in a corner...

Another copper rectangular copper shelving unit with buttons and other assorted unfinished projects and clutter.

If you have read and looked at

these photos and are STILL with me, God bless you!

I hope you are not too scared.

Wait til you see the next post on the AFTER shots. This process took me 3+ weeks...

The final push was yesterday, Saturday, finishing touches too. There is more to come, but good stuff, you'll see.

I am working on that post later today...